New Delhi, Feb. 26 -- India is opening its massive railway network to the country's startup ecosystem, offering to fund up to half of the development costs for new technologies in a bid to modernize the world's most populous nation's primary transport system.

The Indian Railways on Thursday unveiled the third and fourth sets of measures under the government's '52 reforms in 52 weeks' programme, launching a new Rail Tech Policy to promote innovation and announcing complete digitization of the Railway Claims Tribunal (RCT) to speed up case disposal.

The latest measures are part of what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has described as a 'Reforms Express' aimed at structural transformation of the national transporter this year.

Announcing the...